Fun!

We had a great time going to the aquarium with Nathan and Sara yesterday...on their membership pass for free, no less! Owen is a fanatical fan of fishies (whee-shees) whether in books, at Petsmart, or in the pediatrician's office, and as expected he exploded in squeals of delight and faux run-on sentences at his excited high pitch when he saw the first giant whee-shee tank. He especially liked the tropical tank with bright colored specimens, and the touch-tank where he could handle (aka attempt marineicide) the sea stars and horshoe crab also ranked highly. He liked the penguins (peh-buens) , but was more fascinated by the aquarium staff cleaning their rock formations than by the peh-buens themselves. The black light near the top level that caused his white sleeves to glow was a major hit, and he would run in and out of the light to see the effect. The sea lions, my personal favorite, didn't hold his attention for a moment. Pictures below!

Owen is getting fantastically good with his letters, almost as good as with numbers. These early reading skills are confusing, now that I see them through his eyes. How do you know when O is zero or the letter O, a capital L looks like a 7 upside down, and turn over a capital U and it's a small n. Not to mention colons and semicolons share so much with lowercase i that they get labeled as such routinely. Owen's favorite letter activity right now is to play with his bathtub letters...stick them to the tub walls, to his tummy, identify them all as they float around him in the tub like he's in a giant bowl of alphabet soup. We have had extremely educational baths lately! Baths had been the source of major tantrums until I discovered the concept of transitioning upstairs with an object. It goes like this: 1. Carefully avoid using the word bathtime. Don't mention that it's coming, don't mention why you might want to go upstairs. 2. Say, "Owen, what do you want to take upstairs tonight? Should we take a book or a toy?" 3. Having bypassed the concept of quitting playing, Owen excitedly hunts his object of choice and happily heads for the stairs on his own and practically jumps in the bath. I am amazed at the enormous impact of subtle changes in language choices. Now I just have to remember to take something from his room downstairs every night because it's getting rather crowded up there!

The little man has started climbing much more lately...that wasn't one of his top skills for quite a while, but he's getting better, which is somewhat harder on me :) He has really grasped the concept of using a stool to help him get a leg up to where he wants to be. He hasn't really grasped what makes a stool functional . So, sometimes he'll go and grab a newspaper, or a dish towel and put it on the ground and attempt to use it as a stool...umm, need a little more than 1/2" elevation there Owen. Of course, he has about 4 useful stools scattered around the house that he knows how to go and get, but he is like his mother in this way. Why put in the effort to getting the 'right' tool when there might be something within arm's reach that I can use instead to get the job done? Reuel and I have labeled this ATT (available tool theory) in the kitchen, where I shun as many extraneous, cluttersome gadgets as is reasonable, and this is no doubt the root of why I can remember flossing my teeth when I was a kid with strands of my hair after eating popcorn rather than going and getting floss that was 3 rooms away. Gross!

Vocabulary is pretty much impossible to catalog these days because it's exploded too much. But there are a lot of funny and cute usages that pop up during our days. Owen has taken to saying 'Later!' when someone is leaving (including Daddy in the morning). His use of the affirmative 'uh-huuuh' in response to questions is ubiquitous. At night before putting on pj's we put 'grease' (aquaphor ointment) on his dry skin spots including his 'bummie' by his request, and he makes eye contact with me, uses very serious eyes and reminds me to use only a 'li'l bit mommy'. (We just bought the jar of ointment with a wide-neck opening rather than the tube, and there were a few incidents where Owen got more than a li'l bit.)

Oh, there's so much to write. But enough for now!


The giant sea tank with rays, sharks, fish, sea turtles (one which is 560 lbs!)


Both boys liked finding brass penguins around the aquarium





Chatting about the specimens





Sea lion tank outside.